Devour Tours, Belem & a Sketch

At the end of the day today I was having "wine with a view" next to Belem Tower, sketching with pencils ... and people who were sitting nearby asked if they could buy the sketch.  They said it would be such a nice memory for them.  So, for my 15 minute sketch, 15 euros changed hands and I can say I sold art in Lisbon.  

Now back to the beginning of the day.  This was my second Devour Tours experience (the first was in Barcelona in 2018) and the tour of food, markets and a swath of the city was fantastic.  We had coffee, bread, ham, Ginjinha (sour cherry liquor), bifana (surprisingly tasty pork sandwich), bacalao a bras (shredded cod with potatoes), chicken sausage (more on that in a moment), a stew of meats (pig ear! various cuts of things, dark red sausage and vegetables), a can of sardines to take home and finally Pasteis de Natas.  All the while, learning about the city, the Carnation Revolution of 1974 that ended dictatorship rule, the big 1755 earthquake and the history/persecution of Jews in Lisbon.  There were 4 in our tour group and the other 3 were much more widely traveled than I am and they ate everything and cleaned their plates.  I tasted almost everything (thank goodness I didn't have to taste pig ear a 2nd time but everyone else said it was delicious in spite of the texture). In addition to all that, we went through the Time Out Market, which was an old failing market that was purchased some years ago by Time Out Magazine and is now again a vital supplier to local restaurants and an adjacent food stall market.  Our guide also gave me great ideas about things to do and how to do them.  Unbelievable and so worth it.  This was one of the steep streets we descended on our way to one of the stops on the tour.

As for that chicken sausage, it's known as alheira and contains breadcrumbs and paprika to make it look pink.  It was made by Portuguese Jews in the 1400s, when they were forced to convert to Christianity and would eat this pink sausage to make it appear that they were eating pork.  Jews in Portugal were successful in escaping the Spanish Inquisition and living among the Portuguese as apparent converts to Christianity until the 1500s, when a massacre occurred in Rossio Square.  There's a monument to remember the thousands killed in the square.  Today, Portugal offers citizenship to any Jews who can trace their lineage to those persecuted as a way of trying to make reparations.  

At the end of the food tour, we were outside the  Time Out Market, which is across the street from the train station that has trains to Belem.  The guide advised me that it's a better use of time to take a 6 minute train ride rather than a 40 minute trolley to get to Belem, so that's what I did after the tour ended (she did say that there's a trolley route that's a tour in itself though the city, but it doesn't go to Belem).  I'd wanted to see Belem Tower, mainly because unlike most of Lisbon that had to be rebuilt after the 1755 earthquake, the Tower is the real deal, built in the early 1500s on the Tagus River. 

 

I also took a sketching break at the Jeronimos Monastery and toured the church there.  The remains of Vasco de Gama and poet Luis do Camoes are in beautifully sculpted tombs there.  Oddly, Vasco de Gama died in India in 1524, his remains were in the town of Vidigueira for 300 years and then in 1880 brought to the monastery.  Here's my little sketch there and Vasco de Gama's tomb.

Between Belem Tower and the Jeronimos Monastery, there's a 2 story wall with a raccoon scupture, made from scrap metal, garbage and paint by Portuguese artist Bordallo II and installed in 2015.  I loved it.